A Tale of Two Unchildren
by Ozymandeos
Summary: Vampires are more common than one would think. Unchildren, those turned in youth, are not. Very few survive long in their new lives. Babette and Rizalia are exceptions, each having lived for centuries. They meet as Babette's home burns, and form bonds drenched in blood in a pact for vengeance. But, in their quest to build a new family and seek revenge, will they let the world burn?
1. Prologue

**Author's Note: Some of you might recognize this from The Darkened Child, an old story of mine that has since been taken down. Rest assured, the story will not be the same aside from this chapter and a single character.**

**But yeah, got back into playing Skyrim recently. And a bit of a wall on my original projects… so here's this. I know I have a problem with not finishing things, and I admit it might happen with this. But read if ya want, and the more support it gets the more I'll be inclined to write on it.**

* * *

"Rizalia, wake up…" I tried to shut my ears to the voice. It was my birthday, after all, so why wouldn't Mother just let me sleep? But even burying my face into one of my luxuriously soft pillows didn't block out her attempts to rouse me. After a few more failed tries, she just rolled me over. I squinted up at the sunlight streaming through my window, before muttering a few words that sent one of my pillows flying at her.

It stopped in mid-air at a look from Mother, before floating back to the head of my bed. I finally gave up on falling back asleep. I sat up and stretched under the stern gaze of my mother, yawning as I did so. When I was as awake as I was going to get, I swung my legs off the bed.

"Young lady, you should know better than that! Have you learned nothing from what your father and I have taught you?" She tapped her foot on the floor while waiting for an answer. It had been like this for the past nine years: I'd do something the easy way, she'd notice and make me correct myself. "If you're going to use magic, use it right. Don't use the cheap spoken shortcuts like those human halfwits."

So I threw the pillow at her again, but this time I manually built up the pathway of the magic in my head, instead of letting the words do it themselves. It was the Telvanni way after all. Without speaking the words, it was nearly impossible for your enemy to anticipate what spell you were going to use. Sure, it took a lot more concentration and you could easily be messed up in the preparation, but the Telvanni sternly advocated that it was better this way.

Mother sent the pillow flying back to its previous position, but she wasn't mad. Her stern glare faded back into her usual affectionate gaze as she helped me get my tangled mess of hair into its usual style. After all, as Mother always said, a Telvanni lady had to look like the noble she was.

While I forced myself into one of the dresses that I had received for my last birthday, she urged me to hurry up. I deliberately went slower than usual, until she mentioned that if I didn't hurry I would miss my birthday breakfast. After that I rushed through getting ready before happily following her out into the rest of the house.

The dining room was a few floors down, and my favorite part of each morning was gliding down and playing while in the air in the shaft leading there. Mother and Father disapproved of these antics, of course, but they never told me to stop. They accepted that a young Telvanni needed some fun , and it was hard to get that with days full of tutoring in many subjects.

I was hoping that after breakfast there'd be a trip outside. I was never allowed outside… not even to practice my destruction spells. That policy for my parents hadn't ended too well… but they still kept it up. When I thought of the fires I'd started in the training room I couldn't help but giggle. With a gifted little mage like me running around, it was a wonder that Tel Venora hadn't burned down yet.

The food here was always delicious, the Telvanni deserved the best of everything after all, but my parents always had the cooks whip up something special for my birthdays. This time it turned out to be some obscure fruit from Valenwood, which I ate more of than could possibly have be healthy. They were sweeter than anything I'd had before, and I'd eaten all of the ones in front of me before I even touched the assortment of my favorite foods that made up the rest of breakfast.

"Time for us to get your gifts, don't you think Honey?" Father asked after he finished chuckling about my behavior. What, did they expect me NOT to be actually bouncing around the room when they had made me wait while they finished breakfast?

"Do you even have to ask? Of course I think it's time!"

"Well then young lady, if you're so eager, why don't you tell us where we put them?"Father grinned as I rushed over to him. Instead of hugging me, he picked me up like he hadn't since I was too young to walk well.

"On the balcony that overlooks the town?" That was where we usually did it. The only time I didn't remember it being there my parents had decided to take me along with them to Port Telvannis a year before Red Mountain's eruption.

"Spot on darling! You're as bright as you are talented." And with that we set off through the shafts and hallways to get to the balcony's door. Father was still carrying me, and it felt good not to have to do anything to move.

Every door that led outside, whether it was to a balcony or something else, had been enchanted specifically to keep me in. I hadn't been able to figure out how to dispel the enchantments yet, so I could only leave when one of them let me out. My parents had never specifically said it, but I had always assumed that those same runes surrounding the doors could be set to kill intruders.

When we got outside, Father let me stand on my own again. I looked around, savoring the sights that I usually only saw through my bedroom window. The air out here was always so much fresher, even if it was usually laden with ash and dust. Surprisingly, the sky was clear today. No clouds, normal or ash, to spoil my birthday outing. The town below was just waking up, the craftsmen and farmers coming out of their little mushroom-pod houses and setting up their workplaces under the burning heat of the sun.

My attention was drawn away from the scene down below when Mother walked over and pulled two things out from under a cushion on one of the benches. I actually squealed in delight as I ran over to her.

"Well Rizalia, we only have two gifts for you this year, but we know you'll love them. One's from your father, and the other is from me. Are you ready for them?"

"Yes! I'm ready!" I kept jumping up to try and see what they were, but she was holding them just so that I couldn't. When Father came over, she handed one of the objects to him but it shimmered and twisted so much that I couldn't tell what it was.

After the two of them shared a smile, he knelt down and held out what I could now see was a thick old book. It's cover was some kind of cracked old leather, with Daedric runes that were so faded that I couldn't read the title. It took me only a few seconds to realize what it was; a tome of old magic, spells that had long been forgotten. I'd heard of these, my parents had mentioned how some wizard-lord or another had found or lost one a few times, but I'd never seen one. They were incredibly rare, not even the Imperial Archives had one, and there had never been one in Tel Venora's library.

"This is a family heirloom. It's been passed down in my family for thousands of years, and each owner has added their own spells to its pages. Magic that everyone else has long since forgotten, and others which have never been seen outside of our family. Now it's yours." I carefully took the book, hugging it's significant weight to my chest. I had never expected a gift this valuable, or this important.

I sat down, keeping the book on my lap, while Mother knelt to give me her gift. It shimmered into appearance in her hands as she held it out toward me. She must have been hiding it with her illusions. Her gift seemed to be a dagger, nearly as long as my forearm, and made of a glittering black metal. Ebony maybe? Intricate designs were etched across the blade, and purple gems were embedded in the hilt.

"This isn't really a family heirloom, but I think you'll like it. I made this back when I was your age, and its enchantment is one-of-a-kind. I call it 'Zantirus', meaning 'Killing Shadow' in the old Chimeran tongue. It's served me well over the centuries, but now I think it's time to pass it to you. After all, no Telvanni lady's outfit is complete without a dagger."

I carefully took the dagger, hilt-first of course, into my hands and turned it over. The patterns on the blade, black on black, reminded me of something I couldn't quite place. Maybe something from a dream? But it felt natural in my hand, the grip soft and comfortable. I'd never been trained with a knife, but now that Mother had given me this I knew she'd teach me how to use it.

"What's the enchantment on it? I can tell that it's there, but not what it is." The haze of magicka surrounding it was a silvery shimmer shot through with crimson strands. Nothing like any of the enchanted objects I'd seen before.

"You wouldn't be able to, I dual-enchanted it with two of my own formulas. It hides itself with an illusion from others, but never from you. When you hold it in your hand, it will seem to shimmer and twist to other people. The other enchantment only takes effect when you draw blood, making even the smallest cut feel like a burning brand being driven into their skin. It is not to be used lightly, and I honestly hope that you'll never need to use it at all."

We stayed out on the balcony for another few hours, casually talking amongst ourselves as I looked through some of the spells in the book. The writing was old, but I could read it with a little effort. The first spell was in the destruction school, a touch-based fire spell. I learned how to construct the magicka for it, and that it would boil the blood of whoever I used it on. I tried it out on the wooden floor of the balcony, burning a small black handprint into the living plant that was our tower. Like always, Mother put it out with a burst of frost before it could spread.

Then, as I started reading into another spell, my parents' conversation fell silent at the same time as I heard what sounded like the pounding of drums in the distance. I got up and walked to the edge of the balcony, my young eyes barely making out the figures marching in from the horizon.

"Honey, get inside and stay in your room. Don't come out until one of us comes to get you." Mother's voice was nearly panicked as her eyes kept darting back to the distant figures. If whatever was happening had two of the greatest Telvanni wizards worried, it was better not to ask questions in my opinion. So I ran back to my room like she had told me to.

Harried voices shouted orders outside, the noise barely reaching me, as the squad of mercenaries that my family kept on call organized themselves and the town outside for something. Portals flashed constantly as my parents summoned more and more Daedra. The glowing runes around my doorway changed from blue to red, confirming my guess that they could be lethal too. At least, the way that a fly dropped to the ground smoking when it tried to go through seemed to say it was lethal.

With each passing minute the drums got closer, and so did the marching figures. After an hour they were near enough for me to tell that they were Argonians, like the slaves in the town. But these weren't the half-naked, scarred and dispirited beings I'd seen. Oh no, these were fierce and angry, covered in war-paint and armed for battle.

I hid under my bed after seeing them coming, crying in fear as I heard screams coming from outside. I whimpered as dark clouds of smoke started billowing up into the sky. Eventually the screams got quieter, less frequent, until they'd nearly stopped altogether. Then they started again, closer now. Sounding like they were inside the tower. Dark smoke started billowing up the shaft closest to my room, and echoing booms like from fireballs exploding came up it.

I screamed as I saw a figure come flying up through the smoke at the same time as the runes around my door sparked and winked out of existence. The scream died out as I saw that it was my mother, her dress torn in several places and smoldering in a few others. She was bleeding from several large cuts on her arms and a smaller one above her eye, but she was my mother, and she was alive.

I ran to her and buried my face in her dress, choking sobs wracking my body as I cried into her dress. She let me stay like that for a few seconds, before she pushed me away and knelt down so her face was nearly level with mine.

"Honey, I know this is scary, but you've got to be strong. You CAN'T forget what I'm about to tell you, understand?" Her voice was rushed, and she kept looking behind her at the shaft, which now had more noises coming up it.

"Ye… yes. I understand."

"Good. Keep this safe." She quickly reached up and took a necklace I'd never seen before from around her neck. It's chain shimmered silver, and the pendant on it was a black rose with red gems inset into it that seemed almost like drops of blood. Mother hung it around my neck before continuing.

"Don't lose the necklace. It will keep you safe." She paused and grunted in pain. "You must get out of here. Keep the family name alive. Stay away from the other Telvanni. They won't hesitate to kill you and claim our lands. Use the book, hone your skills, and when you're one hundred return and claim your birthright. All the proof you'll need is in my family's ancestral tomb on Solstheim. It was there long before the Nords claimed the island, and will have everything you could need to convince the others that you are our heir. Be…"

Whatever she was going to say next, I'll never know. Because at that moment, her body tensed as a spray of blood came out of her mouth and splattered onto my face. I screamed as I saw an arrow protruding from her chest. Then her body fell over backwards.

I kept screaming as I saw two Argonians standing at the edge of the shaft, one with dark green scales holding a bow, and the other with pallid grayish scales and frosty magicka dripping from his fingers. The gray one's eyes were dark red, and just looking at them made me scream harder.

"Oh shit…" The green one began, looking sick. But that may have just been from his scales. "Did I just do what I think I did?"

"If you mean killing that Telvanni bitch in front of her daughter, then yes," the red-eyed one answered. "Good job there, now finish the kid off. We've got to clear out the rest of the tower."

"No. She's barely more than a hatchling, I'm not going to have a child's blood on my hands!"

"If we let her live, she'll end up just like her witch of a mother."

While they argued, I struggled to get a fireball ready, forming the structure of magicka in my mind and keeping it ready to unleash at a moment's notice.

"Kill her if you have to, but I'll have no part in this. Killing children is stooping to their level, and I won't go that far just for revenge." The green scaled Argonian turned to go back down the shaft, and he was just a few steps from it when the other one acted.

"Nothing personal then…" His voice changed, becoming more sibilant and almost like a hiss. "But I need to feed. And children's blood is oh-so sweet." Before the other Argonian could react, the red-eyed one had drawn his sword and stabbed him in the back. The sword glowed red with parasitic magic, and the Argonian died with barely a scream.

The stress and pressure of the situation became too much for me. It broke my concentration, causing the fireball to explode when I tried to form it. The shockwave from it backfiring threw me and everything near me backwards. I crashed into the bed and slumped to the ground, my vision blurry as something wet trickled down through my hair.

My vision was still blurry as slow footsteps approached. I couldn't focus at all, and couldn't see the dagger that Mother had given me. I was defenseless as the murderous Argonian stomped closer and closer to me. I didn't even have the energy to scream as I felt his arms slide under me and lift me off the ground as he knelt next to me.

That changed when I felt two spots of sharp, searing pain in my neck. My vision cleared almost instantly as I shrieked in pain, jolting around and dislodging the fangs that had sunken into my neck. I saw Zantirus lying half-buried under the covers which had blown off my bed. I barely managed to break the Argonian's grip as I lunged for the black dagger. I gripped it tightly with both hands and spun around just as the frustrated lizard-man leapt at me.

I was still screaming, with tears dribbling down my cheeks, as his momentum carried his body onto the dagger. His eyes widened in surprise and fear as the blade sank into his chest, but they dulled and went lifeless as the blade sank deeper into what I assumed was his heart. I shoved his body into the wall with a spell before struggling up onto my unsteady legs.

I don't know how long I stood there crying over my Mother's broken body, but when I heard what sounded like more people coming up the shaft outside I started moving fast. I didn't have any kind of plan aside from just getting out of there was fast as I could.

I grabbed the book, wiped my dagger off on the dead Argonian's armor, and then shattered the window with another spell. I started to go, but then realized something that might have saved my mother's life. I went over to my chest and dug down to the very bottom, where there sat a small silver disk. To some, it would seem like a simple ornament. But the enchantments made it so much more. It was permanently linked to Oblivion, as shown by the black aura that few but I could see, and would summon a Dremora Lord when activated. I cried at the thought that if only I'd used it earlier, perhaps Mother would still have been alive.

But I wiped those tears away as I levitated out the window. I had to be strong: my old life had ended and a new one had begun.


	2. Chapter One: Honorhall

Chapter One: Honorhall

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"You don't belong here."

I rolled my eyes at the boy who'd spoken. "Gee, you think?" I retorted. "What was your first clue? My skin? My eyes? My ears?"

He bristled with rage. I was chuckling on the inside as I kept baiting him by saying, "Surely it didn't tax your tiny Nordic brain so much just to realize that a Dunmer doesn't belong here?"

He snapped at that. I easily stepped to the side of his anger-fuelled punch and tripped him as he stumbled forward. The other kids in the orphanage laughed as I kept doing that. It really wasn't a fair fight. He was twelve at the most, and I was over two hundred. But to these rather immature orphans I was in their age range and not an old vampire with more skill at magic than most master wizards.

The laughter stopped abruptly as the orphanage's headmistress, Grelod the Kind, came in. I'd only been here an hour and I already knew she was the worst kind of person. Worse even than the other racist Nords. How someone like her got in charge of an orphanage I'd never know, but there were a LOT of bodies buried in the small walled off patch of ground outside.

The old hag stormed right over to us. She kicked the boy until he got up and scurried away, then turned to me. I was rather tempted to incinerate her, but decided against it. For the moment anyway. Nobody could accuse me of being innocent after nearly two centuries as a vampire, not with how many people I'd killed, but I didn't kill for no reason. No matter how good it would have been for these children if Grelod died, I wasn't going to do it right in front of them. Not where there were witnesses anyway.

"I leave you ungrateful little bastards alone for a few minutes and you're already fighting? You need discipline and I have just the thing for you," she sadistically hissed as her hand locked around my wrist in a surprisingly strong grip. She dragged me through a few hallways and into a room with a floor of sawdust, clumped together in places in suspicious brown masses. The shackles and deplorable instruments gathered on the wall filled me with even more disgust for this crone. Not even some of the more savage vampires I'd met in my years of life went that far. Sure, some did torture people, but never children. Those they just killed and ate immediately, which was a better fate.

I let her lock me in a pair of shackles on the wall and just glared as she said, "I'll be back to give you what you deserve later." The sneer on her face told me exactly what she meant.

When she was gone, I put my plan into action. It took just a simple telekinetic spell that I barely had to think about to bring the key over and unlock my shackles. Pulling my token out from its hidden pocket in my dress, I sat down to wait. While I could easily kill and feast on her myself, it had been awhile since I'd let Kathukesh have any fun. While an old lady wouldn't be much, it was better than nothing. And besides, what better than a Dremora Lord to make sure nobody messed with me when I left?

I hadn't even wanted to be here, but for once a guard seemed to have grown a heart. He's apparently noticed that I had no family, and decided that I'd be better off here than on the streets with the recent rash of vampire attacks in the city. Ironic, considering that I was the vampire. I'd normally have just killed him and left Riften for a few years, but there had been too many people around. So I'd let him bundle me along here, fully intending to escape at the first oppurtunity. It had been about time to leave anyway. Maybe I'd go to Markarth next. It was a bit far away, but I hadn't been there in years.

It was, admittedly, rather dull as the hours passed. I contented myself with practicing a few spells, but was seriously tempted to just summon Kathukesh now. While he disliked it when I didn't have anything to kill, he was rather fun. He understood me and my vampiric urges. He only really disliked it when I purposely acted like the child I seemed to be, but even then he wasn't too bad. Besides, he liked being in this world much more than on his plane of Oblivion. I'd even go so far as to say we were friends.

It must have been a few hours past nightfall when the hag finally came back in, this time with a whip in her hand. As she started to yell something at me, I activated the enchantment. However, as Kathukesh stepped through the swirling portal that formed, the old woman's face twist into an expression of exquisite pain and she fell forward, revealing a knife embedded in her spine. Presumably, it had been put there by the Imperial in leather armor standing in the doorway.

"And that is the last time you'll ever torture an orphan, Grelod. Are you…" the woman spat on the corpse and then turned to me, trailing off as she saw Kathukesh. "Did you just summon a Dremora?"

Kathukesh ignored her and asked, _"Why have you summoned me?"_

The woman's jaw fell open as I replied in the same harsh language, _"I was going to have you kill the old hag, but the woman over there beat you to it." _I paused to gesture at her and continued, in the common tongue, "Yes, I did. Can't you?"

She stumbled over her words as she said, "But…but you're just a kid!"

_"Can I kill her for that insult to you?" _

_"No, not this time," _I commanded him before telling the woman, "I'm so much more than that. Now would you be kind enough to step out of the doorway? I have places to be, and my friend here gets rather violent when delayed."

The woman mutely stepped to the side as I walked out the door with my Dremora protector in tow. I giggled as I said, "The look on her face was priceless, was it not?"

He replied in his gravelly voice, "It was rather interesting. Not as much so as what I see when you let me kill someone, but interesting nonetheless." After a moment of silence he added, still in the common tongue, "You are aware that someone is watching us?"

"Yes, I am," came my reply. I'd noticed it as soon as we'd gotten into the hallway. My next words were loud enough for whoever was watching to hear. "As long as they don't interfere with us leaving the city, I don't really care."

The watcher didn't follow us as we left the orphanage. At this time of night, even Riften was mostly deserted. The few thieves, guards, and beggars that did see us made sure to steer a wide berth around what was obviously a Dremora Lord. We reached the city walls with no problem. It took just a little bit of persuasion, and by that I mean a bit of unique magic from the book which let me just make them black out for a moment and act like nothing had happened afterwards, to get out of the city. The stables weren't far away, and I dismissed Kathukesh as we reached them. It wouldn't do to scare a carriage driver with him. After all, a bribe could only do so much.

I walked up to one of the carriages outside the stable. This was the only one whose driver was still there instead of sleeping inside the building like the others. He looked down at me and said, "I don't give out charity."

"I'm not here for charity. I want to hire you."

"I aint in the business of taking little girls anywhere without their parents. Now either get lost or come back with them," he said with a condescending tone. I sighed; this was the norm for me. One of the downsides to seeming to be only ten years old.

I reached into my secret pocket again and pulled out a diamond that I'd stolen from the last person I'd drained. With that having been just yesterday, I wouldn't really feel the need to feed until late tomorrow. Longer than that and the sun would start to actually burn me instead of being uncomfortable.

"Will this change your mind?" I asked. His eyes bulged at the sight of the gem, which was probably worth over two months worth of his trips carting people across a realm as harsh as Skyrim.

"Uh…where to little miss?" he asked, licking his lips as he looked at the jewel in my hand.

"Markarth. We leave now, you don't pick up any other passengers, and you don't ask questions. If we get there within two weeks, I'll give you another gem. Deal?"

"Deal. Climb in back and we'll be off."

* * *

The majority of the trip passed rather easily. We would stop each night at roadside inns or in small towns or villages and then go through the entire day. It was boring, but I could handle it. I'd had much more boring trips when walking. Those were made all the worse due to the slight limp I had from an old wound where a boulder had broken my left leg in over a dozen places. I'd healed it, but not well. And the only way to fix it now was to have it broken the exact same way then heal it properly. Not something I could do. It just goes to show that magic isn't the answer to every problem. Just ninety percent of them.

The first day had the only thing of note happen: the woman from the orphanage raced past us on a horse. That was a much more efficient way to travel, but there had never been any in Tel Venora. Nobody would sell one to a little girl either, so I didn't know how to ride one. I wondered where she was off to in such a hurry, but it was none of my business. Nothing much happened for the next eight days, which was when we passed along the road in front of Falkreath. This was the most dangerous part of the trip, in my opinion. Falkreath probably still remembered my little escapade last year where I'd killed a few guards after they'd caught me feeding.

I shrank back against the seat as I realized there was a group of guards standing on the road ahead. I silently willed them to let us keep going, but one of them held out a hand and yelled for us to stop.

"Is there a problem?" the driver asked.

"No, but we've been told to warn everyone passing this way," the guard replied. "The Dragonborn rode through recently. She found the Dark Brotherhood sanctuary about half a day's travel down the road, an hour or two past Half-Moon Hill. She killed the assassins, but says that one of them may have been missing at the time."

"I'll take my chances. The little miss in the back is paying me quite a bit to get her to Markarth. Besides, what reason would an assassin have to go after a simple carriage driver like me?"

"Your funeral then." The guard shrugged. Then he saw me. "Wait a second…that girl looks familiar."

He stepped closer and I prayed to several divines and as many Daedra to let him not recognize me. I really wasn't feeling very well, and was most definitely not in the mood to have to fight my way out. If they did recognize me… well I wasn't feeling generous. I'd probably let Kathukesh out to have fun, and then feed from whatever corpse was left semi-intact. Maybe that would improve my mood. It would definitely improve his.

Sure enough, none of the deities were listening. The confusion on the man's face turned into recognition just as I summoned Kathukesh.

_"Make it look like it was the Stormcloaks,"_ I instructed. He gave a feral grin, roared, and then drew his sword. I made a show of yawning as the carriage driver's head flew off of his shoulders. The blood stayed nice and fresh in the body though, due to the flaming enchantment on the sword.

Kathukesh was like a destructive whirlwind as he carved through the four guards. Only two of them actually managed to get their swords drawn. The only one with even a lick of sense in him tried to run. Leaving Kathukesh to toy with the other two, I shot off in pursuit with a burst of magic. Normally levitation was slow and methodical, but I'd found a few ways to improve it. Shame that I couldn't use it much because of how it was a major crime nowadays.

He fell forward when I crashed into his back. Before he could even get his hand onto his sword, I smashed my hand down onto his back, sending a pulse of lightning into him. He screamed, twitched, and then fell silent, cooked from the inside out. The blood would be no good from him now. So I walked back over to the dead carriage driver as my Dremora partner finished off the guards. I drank my fill from his corpse and then motioned for him to follow me.

Some foreboding feeling told me that my life would soon be changing forever. As if another chapter was closing, just like when my family had died.

* * *

**Author's Note: Yeah… short chapter is short. Too much so. But I couldn't drag it out any further. **

**Next, when it comes, will be better. Longer at least. **


End file.
